After studying texts on aerodynamics and aircraft construction, he came up with a design that was easy to build, required a light touch on the controls, and was stable and responsive in the air. He decided to design and build a hang glider better suited to these conditions and the terrain.
Wolf found the Rogallo's performance completely unsuited to flying in the calmer air above the flat fields of Indiana. He first flew a Rogallo and found the kite-like glider adequate above the hills and the strong coastal updrafts prevalent in the West where the sport was most popular. Wolf had taken to hang gliding while working as an aircraft flight instructor in Indiana. Bill Wolf believed he could design a better, safer hang glider by adopting certain layout and design features used on conventional aircraft. When pilots began to use this glider for long distance flights, often flying through turbulent air, many found that the Rogallo performed poorly. A Rogallo was a fine choice if the pilot wished to fly in conditions for which it was designed, short flights in mild weather. The Rogallo wing hang gliders that resembled huge, manned kites initially fueled this surge in public interest. Wolf designed the Sportwings Valkyrie as hang gliding mushroomed in popularity during the early 1970s. Powell, past President of the United States Hang Glider Association (USHGA), donated the Valkyrie to the National Air and Space Museum on March 16, 1978. The pilot deflected drag rudders suspended from each wing tip to turn the aircraft. Steel cables braced the wings and steadied the pilot who sat in a swing seat and controlled pitch by shifting his or her weight fore and aft. To aid longitudinal and lateral stability, Wolf used seven degrees of wing dihedral. The Valkyrie wing was long and thin and slighty swept, and both leading and trailing edges ran straight from root to wingtip. Wolf's design was considerably different from the sharply-swept, short-span Rogallo wing. He studied books on aerodynamics and aircraft construction and then designed a monoplane glider that was easy to build, lightweight, and handled well in the air. Wolf was dissatisfied with the flying qualities of the standard Rogallo wing hang glider. Wolf designed the Valkyrie specifically to fly well above the flat terrain of the Mid-West. Powell Physical Description Rigid-wing hang glider with unswept and non-tapering high-aspect ratio wing pilot supported in swing seat a yaw and drag rudder is suspended from each wingtip pronounced wing dihedral (7 degrees). Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives, African Art.
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